Blogvark

Recipes, updates and images from Aardvark Alternatives. We are a wholefoods, and natural products shop in the heart of Carmarthen, south Wales. We stock - Organic fresh fruits and vegetables Gluten free and vegan products. Organic and natural foods. Natural and organic beauty, bath and hygiene products. Eco friendly cleaning products. Local products. Coffees and teas. World foods. Herbal remedies. Green mother and baby products. You can find us online here - http://www.aardvark-wholefoods.com You can find us at 6 Lammas Street Carmarthen, SA31 3AD. :) Or you can reach us by email on [email protected] or by phone on 01267 233445

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Guacamole

Guacamole

I love guacamole. There, I said it. I am a guacamoleholic. Since the fateful day a mere 3 years ago when I tried avocados for the first time, I have been in love with the flavour and texture of the green godliness.

Making guacamole is incredibly simple, and in my experience it's always way better than the kind you buy in the supermarket. There's a sort of formula to it – you want the avocado, the flavour enhancers, and the acid.

A simple, uncomplicated guacamole can contain only four or five ingredients.

For mine I like to include -

2 Organic Avocados

2 Cloves Garlic

Juice of ½ lime or lemon.

Pinch of salt

Grind of pepper

And here's how you do it!

In a pestle and mortar, grind up your peeled garlic cloves with your salt and pepper. The salt will help break down the garlic, and help to spread out the seasoning through your guacamole! At this point add your lemon or lime juice, and re-grind. This will spread out the garlic flavour a bit and 'cook' it so you don't have such a harsh raw garlic taste.

Add your ripe avocado flesh, and mix together with your pestle until smooth. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, it all depends on your preferences! Sometimes it's nice to have a bit of texture in there.

Enjoy!

As you can see, it's probably the most simple recipe possible. I always have mine with toast, or something crunchy, just for contrast!

This time I had it with toasted toasted Granary Sour dough from Marie (our fantastic bread baker!), and some sauteed bacon, chard, spinach and mushrooms. Doesn't get much more tasty than that! 

Blogvark 

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Alternatives Week - Veggie bean burgers

Alternatives Week – Satisfying veggie bean burgers.

I've always liked veggie burgers, they have all the attributes you want – they're comforting, they're healthy, they look a lot like regular burgers, so you don't feel like you're missing out on the 'experience'. Sometimes they can fall kind of flat, though. When I started to think about my own veggie burger recipe I sort of accumulated a bunch of qualities I wanted it to have – I wanted it to be substantial and filling for one, because I was accompanying it with salad. I wanted it to be warming. I wanted it to withstand cooking in the pan without breaking up (a tricky one), and I wanted it to have that sort of savoury, 'beefy' taste but without actual meat.

This is a pretty tall order, really, but the recipe I worked on definitely fits the bill.

Here's what you'll need -

5 large organic chestnut mushrooms, finely chopped.

1 red onion, finely sliced.

1 tsp olive oil.

2 eggs (or equivalent flax eggs if you're making this vegan)

3 tbsp ground flaxseeds

1 tsp vegetable bouillon.

½ tsp paprika, ½ tsp garlic flakes.

Pinch of herbamare salt, and black pepper.

1 tin haricot beans, drained.

1 tsp miso paste, diluted with 1 tbsp hot water.

And here's how you make it.

Take your finely chopped red onion and your chopped mushrooms, and fry in 1tsp of olive oil (or coconut oil) until nicely caramelized. Leave to cool.

In a separate bowl, mix two eggs (or flax eggs/no-egg), spices, flax seeds, seasonings and flavourings. Mix well.

Add 1 can drained haricot beans to the onion and mushroom mixture, and once it has sufficiently cooled down, mix it with the egg mixture. You can mash up some of the beans for a varied texture!

Form into burgers (it may be easier to do this in the frying/griddle pan if the mixture is too liquid).

Heat a dry frying pan at a medium heat. When the pan has come up to temperature, add your burger mixture. This recipe will make 2 very large burgers or 4 large ones. (Alternatively, you could split the mixture into 8-10 and make these as meatballs). Fry until golden one one side. You'll see when the mixture begins to cook properly – the burgers will visibly begin to firm up and the beans will have a lovely caramelization.

While the burgers are cooking, brush with your miso paste. After they're done cooking, brush with a little extra miso for a savoury flavour!

And that's all there is too it! It was my first time concocting a recipe for veggie burgers, and I think they have something of the substantial savoury glory I hoped they would. These go great with salads and other typical burger accompaniments!

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Handmade Chocolate Truffles.

Handmade Chocolate Truffles.

Whatever your plans for today, these chocolate truffles are the perfect indulgence!

When I think about what to make for Valentines day 'anything with chocolate' immediately springs to mind. This recipe is for handmade chocolate truffles. If you've never made your own truffles before, prepare to be impressed with yourself. These have a crisp, rich chocolate shell and a melting velvety inside. Mmmm.

Where was I?! Ah yes, the ingredients! If you're low on cash, or you like your chocolate plain these truffles will only need to ingredients.

For ours we used -

200g of Vivani dark organic cooking chocolate or Divine Dark Chocolate.

125ml Daioni double cream.

Here's how you do it -

Get your lovely bar of chocolate, and break it up. I find chopping it up with a large knife works wonders, and lets it melt more easily into the cream.

Put your cream in a saucepan onto a low heat, and gradually stir in all of the lovely chocolate. Once the chocolate has melted completely you can pour into separate containers if you're making more than one flavour, or into one large bowl if not, and put in the fridge to set. Important note – do not boil the mixture, and keep stirring! When the chocolate starts to melt, take the pan of the heat or you may end up with it sticking to the bottom.

Now, the truffles will be perfectly gorgeous without flavouring, but if you add just a couple of drops of something you like, they'll be transformed into something incredibly special. We did two flavours for ours – one was orange and glacé cherry and the other amaretto liqueur. This is what I used -

4 glacé cherries, finely chopped.

3 drops Steenbergs Orange Extract.

2 tsp amaretto liqueur.

Add your extras, and then it's time for the truffle coating!

Wait until your truffle mixes have cooled down enough to harden (they'll never go completely solid, but they'll be just hard enough to work with after a few hours).

Ball your truffle mixture using two small spoons, or a melon baller – this may get messy! Don't panic though! I put mine into some disposable foil trays so that I could layer them up in my fridge while the chocolate melted.

Using a bain-marie (a bowl or pan over a pan of gently boiling water – make sure the water isn't touching the the bottom of your upper bowl!) and melt another 100g of your chosen dark chocolate, being careful not to heat it too much!

Using a fork (I found this method least messy!) dip your truffle balls into the molten chocolate, covering the entirety of the outside. Put them onto either a clingfilm or baking paper covered tray, or into your disposable trays and leave to cool.

At this point, you can decorate the truffles outside if you so desire! I adorned mine with cacao nibs, chocolate sprinkles and tiny glittering sugar flowers, but they'd be gorgeous covered in icing sugar, chopped nuts or desiccated coconut.

That's all there is to it! If you put these in the fridge they're going to start to sweat, so really they're better boxed up and eaten fast. ;)

We hope you enjoy them!

Blogvark.

x

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Oatmeal, cacao and peanut butter cookies! (Vegan and gluten free)

Oat cookies with cacao nibs and peanut butter!

Here's our recipe for yummy oatmeal cookies. These are gluten free, vegan, and have no processed sugar!

I originally had a bit of golden caster in here, along with some chocolate chips. I switched the caster for coconut palm sugar (the yummiest substance in existence) and a banana, and the chocolate chips for cacao nibs. As a result you can eat these delicious cookies without a trace of guilt! Huzzah! They're chewy, moreish, naturally sweet and delicious.

As well as that, I wanted to make this recipe super, super easy to make. Therefore all the measurements are mug based! Grab your favourite mug (any size will do - the batch will be proportional to the mug size, so a teacup will give you a nice small batch, while a normal mug will yield a hearty 30ish cookies (I cook mine in two batches).

Here's what you need for these -

3/4 mug gluten free oatmeal (We used Alara Scottish Oatmeal)

1/2 mug gluten free oats (We used Alara Scottish Oats)

1 mug ground almonds

1/2 mug coconut oil

1/2 mug coconut palm sugar

2 small bananas, peeled and mashed

1/4 mug cacao nibs

1/2 mug peanut butter (Meridian crunchy is our favourite - and it's 100% roasted peanuts - no added oil!)

optional addition - 2 capfuls of vanilla extract.

If you don't want to make a gluten free version, ordinary oatmeal and porridge oats work just as well! You can also substitute the ground almonds for semolina and the coconut oil for butter or vegetable spread, but the coconut oil is just lovely in this.

And the method is really super easy! You can mix this any way you want to really, but it's slightly easier if you mix the wet ingredients and banana first and then add the dry. Line a baking tray with baking paper, and then roll the dough into balls with your hands (about a spoonful is good for each), then flatten the balls onto the tray gently with with your fingers.

Preheat your oven to gas mark 4/180 degrees C and bake for about 10 minutes. Let them cool a little, and you're done! :D

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Cacao Coconut Cupcakes and Elvis Peanut Butter Banana Cupcakes

On September 27th 2013 Aardvark Alternatives celebrated its first year in Lammas Street, Carmarthen! In celebration of the big day, we decked out the shop, had a bunch of taster sessions, and made up some goodie bags for our lovely customers.

When we mentioned our birthday party to the lovely people at Suma Wholefoods they sent us a bunch of goodies to make free cupcakes with! :D

The first cupcake combination we tried was cacao coconut.

For these we used Suma desiccated coconut, and cacao nibs, as well as raw cane sugar!

Cacao and Coconut Cupcakes.

125g unsalted butter

125g raw cane sugar (or golden caster)

4 tbsp demarera sugar

5 tbsp fresh ground cacao powder

50g dark chocolate

125g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

2 eggs

1 cup rice milk

For topping – 200g desiccated coconut, 200g icing sugar, 100ml rice milk.

Gas mark 4/180 degrees C. Makes around 12 cupcakes.

Method.

To make the cacao and coconut cupcakes, you need to first get your cacao nibs, and grind them finely! Once you have around 5 tbsp of cacao powder, you're set!

Cream your cacao, butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.

Melt 50g dark chocolate and add to the mixture.

Then add your dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, salt.

Mix with a electric whisk until all of the ingredients are well incorporated, and then add your liquids – egg and rice milk. This will loosen up the mixture, and make for moist cupcakes!

Bake in a preheated oven for 25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Once baked, leave to cool on a wire rack.

For the coconut topping – mix icing sugar and rice milk until thick, and then add coconut. Leave the mixture to one side until the cakes have cooled, and then spread liberally over the top! Put the cakes in the fridge overnight to harden up the tops.

Optional extras – I made two batches of these cakes, and on the second batch I dipped the cakes in dark chocolate, and sprinkled over with some fine ground cacao nibs and a little extra coconut!

We then moved on to the second cake, Elvis Peanut and Banana cupcakes! For these we used Suma banana chips, peanut butter and raw cake sugar. Yummy!

Elvis cupcakes.

2 ripe bananas, mashed

125g raw cane sugar

3 tbsp demarera sugar

125g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

2 eggs

1 cup rice milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the topping – banana chips, 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup icing sugar, 75g butter.

Gas mark 4/180 degrees C. Makes around 12 cupcakes!

Method

Peel your bananas, and mash in a large bowl. I used a potato masher to mash mine, but a fork would work just as well!

When the bananas are pulp, add your sugar and give the mixture a brief whisk with an electric mixer.

Add your dry ingredients, and mix well.

Now you can add the liquid ingredients – as with the cacao cakes, this mixture is quite liquid, but will make for delicious, moist cakes!

Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. These cakes have pulped fresh fruit in them, so they're not going to dry out as much as a plain sponge mix would.

Leave cakes to cool, and set to work on the icing! Mix together crunchy peanut butter, icing sugar and butter until well creamed, and then pipe on to the cooled cakes using a piping bag. Top with banana chips – and then you're done!

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Spiced Apple Crumble

A spiced apple crumble.

Well, dear readers - I apologise profusely for the lack of updates! We've been having quite a few events over the last few months, and so I've gotten behind in my blogging. Not to worry - I have quite a few recipes to update you with this week. ;)

Today's recipe is warming, nutty, crumbly apple crumble. As someone who dislikes cinnamon in most things ('What do you like, blogger?!' I hear you all scream), I decided to add only a touch to this recipe, and to add couple more warming, aromatic spices as well to take this crumble up a notch.

One of the things I don't usually enjoy when it comes to traditional British puddings is the sort of stodginess of them. Sometimes 'crumble' topping can be pretty doughy and sickly, kind of like a layer of half-baked non chocolatey cookie dough. Ok, so I love cookie dough, but I think a crumble topping should be just as advertise – crispy, crumbly, a texture that counter balances the sticky spiced apples beneath. With this in mind, I decided to add a couple of extras to my topping – a generous handful of both roasted hazelnuts, cashews and walnuts (placed into a sandwich bag and bashed with something heavy until you have nutty bits of various sizes) give the most delicious, chewy texture.

Anyway, here's the recipe!

Ingredients.

3 large Bramley apples, cored and sliced thinly. (I leave my skin on, because I quite like the texture, but if you don't fancy that, give them a peel before you chop them!).

2 tbsp dark muscovado sugar

150ml hot water.

2 tbsp lemon juice.

1 cap of brandy (optional!)

Small handful mixed vine fruits.

4 dried apricots, chopped roughly.

½ tsp ground cinnamon

4 cardamom pods.

Topping ingredients.

1 handful cashews, crushed.

1 handful roasted hazelnuts, crushed.

1 handful walnuts, crushed.

2 tbsp dark muscovado sugar.

2 tbsp golden caster sugar.

¾ cup plain white flour.

½ cup butter or non dairy spread of your preference.

1 tbsp oatmeal.

And here's how you do it -

Preheat your oven to gas mark 5/190 degrees.

Core and cut up your lovely Bramley apples, and peel if you want to. Put these aside in a bowl while you get your spice mixture on!

In a saucepan heat the sugar, spices, water, lemon juice (and brandy) and dried fruit until bubbling and infused. While bathing luxuriously in this liquid, the dried fruit will absorb some of the lovely moisture and plump up.Then add in your apples, stirring well. Turn off the heat, and let the mixture sit for a minute while you make your crumble topping.

To your smashed up nut mixture, add the rest of the topping ingredients. Mash 'em together with a fork until you've got some fine crumbs and some large lumps.

Spread out your apple mixture in your pie dish of choice, and top with the crumbley topping!

Shove in the oven for about 25-40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the apple mixture is bubbling nicely at the edges.

Voilà! There's your spiced apple crumble. Of course, remind your self, or your fellow crumble eaters to have a look for the cardamom pods in there. Alternatively, you can add ½ tsp of dried cardamom, but personally I love the little green pods.

I hope you enjoy this recipe! It really is a lovely way to warm yourself up on a winters day! 

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A little on alternative sweeteners!

The blogvark guide to sweeteners!

If you tuned in to our facebook page last week you'll see that we had lots of information on Agave. Here's a little information about a couple more sugar alternatives!

Xylitol – Xylitol is classed as a sugar alcohol, and is often used as a diabetic-friendly alternative to sugar. It is reported to be actively beneficial to dental health(!) and proven to help reduce dental caries (cavities) by up to a third. It also has 33% less calories than ordinary sugar. It has a very low glycemic index. (I'm sold!)

Stevia – Stevia is a processed sweetener, extracted from the Stevia leaf. The Stevia leaf is claimed to be up to 300 times sweeter that table sugar. Zero calorie alternative to sugar. Seemingly, there are no downsides to using stevia, apart from the nature of it as a highly processed product (albeit with a natural beginning). Stevia is increasingly being used alongside sugar, and put into blends by the big brands (such as Tate and Lyle). (As well as having some granulated stevia products, we also have chocolate sweetened with stevia! Yum)

Maple syrup – Derived from the sap of maple trees. Similar to sugar calorie wise, but very good source of manganese and zinc. 15 times more calcium that honey. Maple syrup has a unique and complex flavour which is great for baking.

Coconut Palm sugar – Made from the sap from the buds of the coconut palm. Rich, caramel flavour. It has 36 times the amount of iron, over 10 times the amount of zinc and 4 times the amount of magnesium! It also has a lower glycemic index that white and brown sugars.

Honey – Honey is composed of 80% natural sugars, 18% water and 2% minerals! It is a delicious, versatile alternative to sugar – using about ½ the amount of honey to sugar will achieve a similar level of sweetness. Honey has been used and revered for thousands of years! (We have quite a few types of honey in store, and all of them are delicious!)

Blogvark

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Organic Bakng - Fig Frangipane tart!

Organic Baking – Fig Frangipane Tart.

So, I love frangipane. I tried to make a tart similar to this one a few years ago, but I didn't have enough almonds or figs, and I'd never made shortcrust pastry before. Also, I tried to use a pie tin. It really wasn't meant to work out, and it didn't. This one, however, did! Huzzah!

Here's what you need to make it -

Shortcrust pastry - Make your shortcrust, via the instructions on this page.

3 – 4 large figs, quartered.

For Frangipane -

125g ground almonds

125g butter

125g caster sugar

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

40g plain flour

zest of 1 lemon

(Optional – 2 tbsp liqueur, almond or cherry!)

And here's how it's done!

Preheat your oven to gas mark 3.

Chill your dough for 20 minutes after making, then roll it out and line your tart tin. Prick with a fork. Line with baking parchment and then blind bake (I used rice to fill my case) for 10 minutes.

Remove blind baking helpers, and bake for a further five minutes, then remove from oven.

Cream your butter and sugar, and then other frangipane ingredients. Whisk until mixed, and then pour into your tart case.

Place your quartered figs into the frangipane.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

After baking, brush with warm honey. Magnificent!

The figs are juicy and deliciously sweet. This is a great way to eat figs, perfect served hot with whipped cream or lavender icecream.

Blogvark

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Organic Baking - Open-top Rustic Plum and Blackberry Pie.

Organic Baking – Open-Top Rustic Plum and Blackberry Pie.

I think these are in vogue at the moment – I've seen a lot of them lurking in food magazines when doing 'research' for the blog! (I don't think this really counts as research considering how fun it is, but still). I was kind of concerned about a couple of things – first was making the pastry so it wasn't too crumbly, and secondly was making sure the filling didn't run out all over my oven. As it turns out, It was much easier than I thought, and fun, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone making a fruit pie as it was waaay easier than making one in a pie dish.

Pastry. 

110g butter, cubed

200g plain flour

1 pinch salt

25g sugar

cold water to bind.

Filling.

5 organic plums, stones removed and cut into quarters.

A large handful of organic blackberries (it's the perfect time of year to forage these!)

25g organic caster sugar (about 4 tbsp)

1 tsp organic plain flour

1 tsp vanilla extract.

(optional) – 1 egg for egg wash.

So the pastry is really just traditional shortcrust with a little sugar added! Easy.

Mix all of the ingredients together with your fingers until they form crumbs, then add a tiny bit of cold water to bind, and chill for 20 minutes.

Get a bowl, and get your fruit, sugar, flour and vanilla extract in there. Stir. The plum juice should wet the sugar and flour just enough to create a kind of paste.

Roll our your pastry on a large piece of baking paper.

Spoon on the filling, leaving a gap all around the edge so you can fold the pastry over.

Crimp the pastry around the edge – this doesn't have to be pretty!

Optionally – eggwash the pastry before baking.

Bake at gas mark 6 for about 20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown.

And that's it!

Golden, delicious short pastry, warm oozing tangy filling. Yummy!

Definitely perfect for warming you up in these colder months, and something you can make with the kids :)

Blogvark

x

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Organic September – Baking Week – Dark chocolate and Chestnut cake.

Organic September – Baking Week – Dark chocolate and Chestnut cake.

You may have seen the quick recipe we put up last week for dark chocolate and chestnut cake. If not, here's the full thing! You may have sensed a trend with these blogs in that most of the things I'm cooking with I haven't ever used before. This recipe follows that trend! It contains a jar of our lovely chestnut purée!

I'm not going to lie – I've imagined the taste of chestnuts for years, even though I hadn't tasted them before. I imagined chestnuts (from the bits of information I had gleaned from Christmas films) as a sort of cross between hazelnuts and almonds – almost chocolatey, but also sweet. Well, when I opened the jar of chestnut purée all of my illusions were shattered.

First of all, the texture was much firmer than the creaminess I had imagined. Secondly it had a strangely savoury smell that reminded me of stuffing(?!). I was pretty scared about eating it in a cake XD But, I assured myself that it was a classic ingredient, and I was just being a big baby. Once I scooped it out of the jar and mashed it up a bit, it looked a lot more likely, but I still wasn't pleased.

Then I made this cake.

And I didn't stop eating it.

I gave some to the rest of the Aardvark Alternatives staff, and needless to say none of it survived to be tested by the customers. D: Bad Blogvark!

Anyway, here the recipe is so you guys can actually try it for yourselves! I promise you won't be disappointed!

(This cake is dairy/gluten free!)

300g chestnut purée (or 300g blended roasted chestnuts!)

4 free range organic eggs

120g golden caster sugar

150g ground almonds

¾ tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the chocolate glaze

150g dark chocolate (gluten/dairy free available!)

100ml hazelnut milk

Method

Preheat your oven to gas mark 3/160 c, and grease your cake tin.

Whisk your eggs and sugar until frothy.

Add your chestnut purée, ground almonds, baking powder and vanilla and whisk until combined.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a tooth pick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. It doesn't look amazing before it goes it, or after it comes out, really, but it tastes amazing, and once the glaze is on it's as pretty as can be.

For glaze – heat chocolate and milk, stirring until the mixture becomes thick and rich. Pour over cooled cake and refrigerate!

And there you have it! Our delicious Dark Chocolate Chestnut Cake! :D

I will be making this every so often, for sure. Not only is it perfect to cook my loved ones with dairy/gluten allergies, but it's indulgent, and just plain addictive.

Blogvark

x

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Our first beauty review post – by guest Blogger Lauren Sourbutts!

Our first beauty review post – by guest Blogger Lauren Sourbutts!

If you visited our Facebook page at any point last week, you'll have seen that we had our first Organic/Natural Beauty days! Over the next few months, we'll be having some more of these days, giving you the opportunity to try some of our products, take home some samples and have a free skincare consultation to find out which products are best for you.

In order to get the ball rolling on the beauty blogging (a lot of b's right there!) we asked the lovely Lauren Sourbutts (who you can find blogging over at Wendy House Blog and Irving's Words) to review some of our favourites.

Here's what she had to say!

Aardvark Reviews

Of late the list of skin issues I’ve been battling has been ever-growing so I decided to embark on a new adventure of skincare and hopefully less problems to contest with. To start myself off on my journey into better products I’ve decided to try out some which are almost entirely made from plants, vegetables and essential oils.

Bentley Organic Shampoo

First on my list to hunt down was a new shampoo because, as someone with natural curls I seem to spend a large amount of time battling dryness and frizz. I decided to give Bentley Organic Shampoo a shot. Made from 100% Naturally Derived Products, 70% of which are Organic I was feeling optimistic. I am trying to keep my hair on a sulphate-free regime as an attempt to retain some of its natural oils but silicon-free hair products are expensive so sometimes I need a good shampoo to get rid of it all. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Bentley shampoo for Dry & Damaged hair contains no sulphates or silicones.

The only product in its ingredients list which I would generally try to keep away from my hair is alcohol but this is rather far down on the ingredients list and a little alcohol is a lot better than the mounds of drying, hair-stripping sulphates which most products contain.

The version for dry & damaged hair contains pomegranate, olive and aloe vera with sweet orange. Generally I get excited about the promise of a scent or fruity ingredients then fail to find any evidence of them except ‘fruit scent’ at the bottom of the ingredients list but, as you can see, this shampoo is packed full of these products – the real deal too, not just a scent which vaguely resembles these ingredients. The smell… it is divine. If you can imagine the smell of orange with hints of pomegranate, olive and aloe vera then well done but if not, just take a whiff of this. When shampooing my hair I do so sparingly out of fear of drying my hair but I am confident in using this shampoo when my hair is loaded full of products and it remains soft and glossy afterwards. I haven’t yet tried out the other products in the range but for those looking to restore some healing oils to their hair then I’d give this a shot. £4.15 for 250ml

Blogvark adds - Though I haven't yet tried the Bentley Organic hair products, I think their reputation speaks for itself. These products look great, and come in Lavender, Orange, Chamomile and Tea Tree, all of them catering to specific concerns. 

Le Petit Olivier Extra Mild Soap

Not only am I blessed with dry hair but I am also often inflicted with dry skin (attractive, I know) so I have been on the hunt for some body products to help heal my skin. I’m not normally a soap kind of gal as I find soaps to be quite drying but alongside the Bentley shampoo I found Le Petit Olivier soap. It is extra mild soap which is paraben free, contains no animal products and is made from 100% vegetable oils. When using it my skin does tend to get that ‘squeaky clean’ feeling – which is generally only ok when it’s your teeth – but my skin doesn’t dry out when using this soap. I’d be hesitant to use it daily on any skin other than my hands but that is because I generally don’t use soap but for anyone looking for a mild, natural soap with a beautiful scent then I’d say this is the way to go. The top ingredient of this soap is sodium palmate which is a derived from palm oil and has a hazardous rating of 0 – the lowest on the scale. Thumbs up!

Blogvark adds - We have a pretty large range of Le Petit Olivier products in store. I spend a lot of time around them when I'm blogging in the office and they smell divine. They are creamy and wonderful. We use the hand soap in the staff bathroom, and it has the most gorgeous smell - the honey one is my favourite!

  Weleda Skin Food

Whilst my search for a body wash made purely from milk and honey continues, finding a natural product which would quench the thirst of my skin was easy. It’s no secret that Weleda make excellent products and I can attest to that through using Skin Food this week. Weleda products are free of synthetic preservatives, fragrances and colourants. I’m not sure I believe them on the fragrances bit because this stuff smells amazing. My forearms currently have the most delicious, sweet scent after I applied it over an hour ago.

With sunflower seed oil, sweet almond, beeswax and rosemary, it all adds up to make one sweet sweet cocktail. In a silly way, what I love most about Skin Food is that when you squeeze it from the tube oils pour out along with the cream. You can *see* the oils in it. It’s also a pretty thick consistency so you’re gonna have to use some elbow grease to rub it into your skin but if it had the consistency of milk I’d be doubtful of its ability to properly nourish my ageing epidermis. I just took a short break there to go and apply some more of this. As amazing as this product is, it doesn’t come cheap. A small tube of 75ml will set you back £8.95 so rather than solution to all-over dry skin I would reserve this for real problem patches of skin such as particularly dry joints or eczema.

Blogvark adds - What more can I say? Skin food is one of those little wonder products that you *need* in your collection. Dry hands, feet and elbows are instantly pampered. We have a large Weleda range - please visit us instore and check it out :) 

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Quick recipe! More detailed version with pictures to come :) 

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Organic September - Baking Week - Rosewater Angel Food Cake

Organic September – Baking Week - Rose Angel Food cake.

It's still Organic September, guys! :D And last week was baking week, so naturally we made some delicious cake, pie and tart recipes for the blog!

You might be able to tell that a lot of the recipes featured here on Blogvark are 'first times'. This one is no different – it's a moist, light, scrumptious rose flavoured angel food sheet cake with rose buttercream. I could eat this cake endlessly!

Here are the ingredients -

5 large free range organic egg whites

1 tsp cream of tartar

1tsp vanilla extract

150g sugar

150g organic white flour

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp Steenbergs organic rosewater

And here's how you do it!

Preheat your oven to gas mark mark 5/190 c.

Pour your egg whites into a large mixing bowl, add your cream of tartar and whisk with an electric mixer until you get stiff peaks! The cream of tartar helps to stabilise the whites, which is very handy!

Sift your dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Add the dry mixture to the whites one cup at a time, using a spatula to fold the mixture together. Add your rosewater and vanilla, and fold until just combined.

Pour into a greased baking pan. I used the disposable kind you can use for brownies, etc!

After about 15-20 minutes check on the cake – If a tooth pick placed in the middle of the cake comes out clean, we're done! Now leave to cool completely.

You can if you like, at this stage just eat the cake as is. It should be light, fluffy, moist and sweet, with that lovely rosewater coming through. I made a rose water butter cream for the top of my cake, but I think if I did it again I'd probably mix some icing sugar and rosewater, maybe add a couple of dried rose petals and pistachios and leave it at that.

If you're a butter cream lover, however – try this!

400g icing sugar

200g unsalted Calon Wen butter

1 tiny drop natural red food colouring

½ tsp rosewater

Whip all of the ingredients together until you have some lovely, fluffy butter cream!

Use a palette knife to spread your butter cream over the cake, and there you have it! This cake will keep well in the fridge for a few days, and goes perfectly with a cup of tea or a glass of lemonade!

When you're making a beautiful cake like this, it's important to use ingredients of a very good quality (such as the free range organic eggs) because they're just going to elevate the flavour and texture to no end! :) I promise, the cake will be of a much higher caliber if you go organic with your ingredients!

Blogvark

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Organic fruits and vegetables – Vegetable soup with marrow dumplings.

Organic fruits and vegetables – Vegetable soup with marrow dumplings.

It's still Organic September, so we're making the most of it here at Aardvark Alternatives! This recipe is for a warm vegetable soup with delicious marrow dumplings. I also roasted some of our beautiful organic veggies with some seeds as a garnish! Mmmm!

There's a teeny bit of prep for this soup, but it's so simple once you've done it. First of all, gather your roasting vegetables!

I used - 

2 rainbow carrots - 1 purple, one white/yellow

1 golden beetroot

1 red onion

1tbsp sunflower seeds

1tbsp organic wildflower honey

pinch salt, pinch pepper

a few cloves of garlic

Chopped!

Cut up your lovely veggies, and drizzle over the seeds, honey and seasoning. 

Shove in the oven at gas mark 6 until beautifully roasted (probably about 25 minutes!) 

Then we can move on to the soup and dumplings!

Here's what I used for the soup - 

2 red chillies, pricked

1/2 courgette, cubed

1 onion, diced

2 rainbow carrots - one white/yellow, one purple, chopped

5 new potatoes, diced

1 golden beetroot, diced

5 mushrooms, chopped

3 large tomatoes

3 cloves garlic, crushed

2 1/2 pints boiling water

Fry the vegetables off for a few minutes in 3 tsp olive oil. 

Then add your water!

Simmer the soup until the vegetables are tender! At this point, you can leave the soup to cool a little, and blend the vegetables for a thicker texture. 

While the soup simmers, remove your roasted vegetables from the oven. 

Now, get to work on the dumplings!

Here's my mix - 

1 very finely chopped red onion

1/3 marrow, grated

1/2 courgette, grated

1 tsp garlic powder

2 tbsp dried nettle leaves

1 tbsp chia seeds

1 tbsp linseeds

1 tbsp crushed walnuts 

1 tsp dried thyme

2 cups flour

handful grated calon wen cheddar cheese

50g calon wen butter, cubed

Form into ball shapes, and place into your simmering soup mixture!

If you've decided to blend your soup before this, be aware that it'll have quite a kick unless you remove the chillies at this stage. I like the spice, so I left mine in!

In the original recipe mix, as you can see in the picture I didn't add enough flour. This recipe should fix that problem. As you can see, my dumplings were a little too moist, so they fell apart a little when cooking, but they still tasted delicious! :D 

Simmer again for about 20 minutes, and you'll have beautiful warming soup and juicy, savoury dumplings! 

Decorate with the roasted vegetables, and there you have it! Beautiful, fresh organic vegetable soup! 

Blogvark 

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Organic September – Celebrating Organic Fruit and Vegetables – Root vegetable fritters.

Organic September – Celebrating Organic Fruit and Vegetables – Root vegetable fritters.

It's Organic September, everybody! That means a ton of posts promoting all of our amazing organic products! This week we're focusing on organic fruits and veg! We have some recipes that will warm you up now that Autumn has arrived. This one is for tasty root vegetable fritters (although 'all of the vegetables in my kitchen fritters' would be more accurate!).

Here are the ingredients! This mixture makes quite a few fritters, so it's perfect if you have a family meal, or if you want some for lunch the next day!

1 large grated carrot

1 large or three small potatoes, grated

1 red onion, grated

1 red pepper, grated

½ courgette, grated

1 stick celery, grated

1 fresh beetroot, grated

2 eggs

pinch salt

pinch black pepper

pinch garlic granules

1 tbsp coconut oil

Now, these fritters are pretty darn simple to make. You'd have to be an idiot to screw them up! Only, I did screw them up first time around by not draining out the liquid before I added the eggs. D: This meant my mixture was incredibly wet, and just not very good.

Once all of your lovely veggies are grated, either gather them up in a clean cloth and squeeze them that way, or put some greaseproof paper over the mixture, and apply something heavy whilst tipping the mixing bowl. You don't want the mixture too wet, or it'll be hard to work with!

Once drained, whack in your eggs and seasoning and mix!

Meanwhile, add a spoonful of coconut oil to the pan, and melt over a medium heat! When melted, add a large spoonful of mixture to the pan, three should just about fill your frying pan depending on the size!

Cook until the bottom is golden brown, and then flip, repeating the process!

Yummy! :D

This is a great way to use up those veggie odds and ends, and so tasty!

Blogvark

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Product of the week - Garden and Hedgerow - Nettle herb quiche

Products of the week – Garden and Hedgerow – Nettle herb quiche.

This week at Aardvark we’re celebrating the fruits and herbs of the garden and hedgerow! Our first recipe is a savoury one – Nettle and herb quiche! If you’ve never made quiche from scratch before, rest assured – it’s pretty darn easy.

Here’s what we used for the pastry –

·         200g organic plain white flour

·         A pinch of salt

·         ½ tsp ground Cumin

·         ½ tsp ground Corriander

·         100g Calon Wen unsalted butter

·         2 tbsp cold water for binding

And here’s how you make the dough!

·         In a large bowl, mix your dried ingredients and cold, cubed butter. Rub the butter into the flour until it’s almost forming a ball, and then add your cold water. It’s important to keep things as cold as possible so the butter doesn’t melt! Cold dough is good dough J

·         After your dough ball is formed, roll it out, and press it into your quiche/tart tin. Refrigerate for 10-15 minutes! Cooking the dough from chilled helps it to relax, and also makes sure of a more even bake. In the time the dough is chilling, preheat your oven to gas mark 6!

·         When the dough has done its time in the fridge, put it into your oven and blind bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Here’s the mixture for the filling!

·         2 tbsp dried nettles

·         1 tsp dried thyme

·         2 tsp dried basil

·         50g Calon Wen unsalted butter

·         2 cloves garlic, crushed

·         4 tbsp milk (and or cream)

·         4 of our Free Range Organic eggs.

·         Pinch salt, pinch pepper

·         75g Calon Wen Cheddar Cheese

And here’s how it’s done!

·         Get your butter, and melt in a saucepan over a low heat. When the butter is melted, add your dried herbs, stirring to make sure nothing burns! This process is going to soften up the herbs, and infuse their flavour into the butter. After a couple of minutes, add your garlic cloves, and stir.

·         By now, you should be able to smell the lovely herb flavours coming out of the pan. Add your milk, and turn off the heat. Let the mixture sit for a minute or three, until the pan has cooled sufficiently so that you can add in the eggs without them cooking. Mix in the eggs, and whisk the mixture a little – you don’t want separate pockets of yolk and egg white, but a lovely evenly coloured mixture. Now add your cheese – I cubed mine so there were little pockets of melting goodness, but grated would be perfect as well!

·         Pour into your cooked quiche base, and cook at gas mark 6 for 20 minutes!

·         Leave to cool for five minutes, and then serve! This dish is great with salad, steamed vegetables, cous cous, or homemade baked beans.

And that’s how easy it is! If you’ve never used nettles in a dish before this is a great introduction to their green flavour, and honestly I don’t think people would guess that the nettle was even in there unless they’re accustomed to the flavour already. I could have put a bit more in really, and you could honestly add any variation of green herbs you wish!

If I make this dish again, and I probably will, I’ll probably add something a little extra to the pastry. The spices have a fresh, savoury taste, but a little parmesan, some herbs, or some ground seeds would make a delicious addition!

If you have any questions about this recipe, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Blogvark.

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It's 'Garden and Hedgerow' Week!

Here’s a special recipe one of our fantastic Staff members brought in to share with you all!

“Hedgerow Jam

·         500g Elderberries

·         500g blackberries

·         500g crabapples (or cooking apple)

·         250g sloes

·         125g hazelnuts optional (from the hedgerow if possible)

·         1.75kg sugar

·         1.5 litres water

  Wash the fruit; remove the stalks from the sloes and prick them with a needle; peel, core and chop apples. Put all of the fruit in a pan with the water, and if you have managed to collect some hazelnuts these should be shelled and put in the pan with the fruit. Simmer till soft, add the sugar and continue to stir until dissolved. Boil rapidly to set.

  The sloes are essential to the overall taste of the jam, but their stones have to be extracted when it is cooking, and this can be quite tricky. Even with the keenest eyesight you will be lucky to remove them all, so you must remember to look out for the odd sloe stone when spreading and eating the jam. Sieving is a possibility, but alters the special texture of the jam with its chunks of crab apple and whole elderberries which burst when the jam is spread on buttered bread or toast.

  If you don’t have all the ingredients of this jam, you can make a simpler version using only blackberries, apple and elderberries.

  (from the Penguin book of Jams, Pickles and Chutneys by David and Rose Mabey)”